


Ripple

by axilet



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Not Actually A Fix-It, Open Ending, References to Another Note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/pseuds/axilet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Misora Naomi lives. Not that it means much, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



_“Here’s my card. It’s nice to meet you.”_

\---

“The likelihood is very high Kira can kill by other means than a heart attack. Kira has probably been killing secretly all this time by pretending he can only kill with heart attacks. Using this strategy he was able to manufacture a situation where Raye was tricked into showing him his badge.”

“This all but confirms Penber-san was Kira’s actual target and was manipulated before he died. Which families was he supposed to be monitoring?”

“Here, I’ll just take a look…”

\---

_“I was recently engaged and was planning to move to America with my fiancé. But something happened, and he...he died. He was murdered. By Kira.”_

\---

Light Yagami. Idealistic, interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement like his policeman father, with the top grades and drive to achieve that dream. Soichirou Yagami had stressed his son’s good points heavily at the same time morosely aware that all those could be used against him in building a case for Kira.

Misora thinks, oddly, of a long ago case, connected to the present by the thinnest of threads. Beyond Birthday, subtly steering her toward the ‘truth’ he’d wanted to be known: a detective investigating his own crime, victim instead of perpetrator. She’d only known for sure he was a murderer when she had burst onto the scene and their eyes had met across the room; the rage and hatred and jealousy that had long ago consumed him finally made manifest in the fire destroying whatever was left of him.

Point was, you never knew the innermost truths about most human beings. Looking at her no one could guess she had once almost shot a thirteen year-old boy dead, and that for nights afterward she had regretted not doing it when her failure had doomed her fellow agents. By avoiding blood on her hands she had only poured on more.

Whatever was driving Kira, whatever the source of the corruption in once-clean waters...no one will ever know. She didn't even really want to know, aside from a certain trainwreck curiosity. They were just around to mop up his mess.

\---

_“The two of us spoke the night before he died. I’m convinced he spoke directly to Kira, and he was killed for knowing too much.  He wasn’t a criminal. But Kira still went ahead and killed him. He calls himself a savior but he’s just a murderer. My husband’s murderer.”_

\---

“We should confront him directly,” she told L when they were alone in his hotel room, safely away from worried fathers. “If he thinks he’s gotten away with it he must have a will of iron not to give himself away somehow.”

If only Raye had said exactly who he had blabbed his name so readily to. If only he had listened to her. If only he hadn’t been such an ignorant, sexist man. Misora spent too much time these days being the stereotypical nagging wife she had sworn she would never be to a man who had long been scattered to the wind. It was crass to feel contempt for the dead but as a person who had dedicated her life to revenge in Raye’s memory Misora was past caring for being crass.

“Kira,” L countered, “must have a will of platinum to have even accomplished as much as he has so far. Somehow is not good enough.”

Fair enough. Misora folded her arms, considering. “He has to be led into taking a course of action,” she said, reeling out the line of her thoughts carefully, feeling at the weight and strength of the prize catch she wanted to bait. “That only Kira would ever think of doing.”

“So far Yagami-kun has passed every test put to him,” L replied, not dismissive but thoughtful. “Penber-san saw nothing throughout all his hours of duty. The surveillance devices we planted have yielded nothing and only succeeded in alienating my team against me. Aside from the trivially obvious, that he and Kira are both highly intelligent and highly motivated individuals, there is nothing concrete to pin on him.” He fixed his black eyes on her. “But he doesn’t know you exist...yet.”

\---

_“What happened to the police task force? For them to be absent at a time like this...if they had done their jobs properly and put Kira behind bars where he belonged Raye might still have been alive today.  What...they’re with L? How do you know this?”_

\---

Misora hardly enjoyed being the trump card waiting to be busted out at the right moment. As the days passed she itched to act, to imprint the indelible fact of her existence in fist-shaped indents across Kira’s as yet mysterious but, in her imagination, smugly smirking visage. “You’re planning something,” she accused, half-annoyed and half-hopeful.

“Kira tries to be cautious, but he’s willing to take bigger risks in proportion with the reward,” L said. “And he doesn’t always keep a cool head doing so. Just look at his mistake with Lind L. Tailor. He’s a true believer and wounding the pride of someone like him tends to provoke an incredibly predictable reaction.”

He sounded just a little too self-satisfied for someone who was supposed to be a cool and analytical international detective. Misora rolled her eyes even though she already knew firsthand that L’s reputation owed far more to Watari’s marketing than the reality. “So,” she said aloud, realization slowly taking shape, “You’re going to dangle something tempting at Kira and hope he leaps at the treat.”

“Like any great magician Kira’s success is entirely dependent on keeping his killing method secret,” L said. “He’ll do whatever it takes to protect it. Even if it means murdering a poor, defenseless, recently bereft woman with no family and friends in Japan. Acting in such a contrary manner is probably not one of your strong suits, Misora-san, but please try your best.”

“Please don’t hurt this poor defenseless woman’s fragile feelings,” Misora grumbled, but inwardly she thrilled. She was more than ready. If she died it would be in the line of duty; the fate Raye had wanted to protect her from at all costs. But he was not here anymore and she no longer had love as an excuse to keep her from doing what she wanted.

\--

_“Of course I’d like to join. No matter how much danger there is, I would give up my life to bring Kira to justice.”_

\---

Light smiled, and wrote Shoko Maki’s name into the Death Note. Misora Naomi smiled back, cold and fierce, and when he said, “Because of Kira,” she answered, “I know.”

It’s over.

\---

At least, until the next Death Note comes to earth, and the Second Kira asks her death god what happened to the First.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for not writing the long casefic that the prompt deserved; I ended up running out of time and had to go for the short version.


End file.
